Janesville company plans small expansion

JANESVILLE—A Janesville company that makes products for the food, industrial, pharmaceutical and personal care markets plans an expansion to house additional production equipment.

But the 5,300-square-foot addition at ABITEC, 1530 S. Jackson St., is not expected to result in additional jobs.

The city plan commission last week approved an amendment to a conditional-use permit to allow the three-level expansion that will house new reaction vessels and related equipment.

ABITEC operates a distribution warehouse, shipping and receiving offices, storage tanks and two production plants in about 43,000 square feet of space.

The company produces mono-, di- and triglyceride emulsifiers in Janesville. The emulsifiers are made through the breakdown of fats and oils.

It wants to upgrade its Janesville plant by adding two small reaction vessels that will ultimately replace a vessel that has reached the end of its useful life.

“This project is not driven by the need for extra capacity but by the need to improve equipment to meet standards expected by the pharmaceutical and food industries,” a company official wrote in a letter to the city. “The additional space and equipment will allow ABITEC to widen the array of batch sizes that can be produced and allow for more accurate scale-up of new and modified products.”